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Olive branch to the TADA?

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I've found something that we Tesla owners (and future owners) can do that might get show some good will in the political arena for the Texas Auto Dealers Association (TADA).

There's a good chance that most Texas Tesla owners are against our current Blue Laws. TADA is also against them. If we join forces to help repeal those laws, maybe we can get them to listen/understand/repeal any legislation that's currently keeping Tesla from selling direct to Texans.

I don't know about you, but I'd LOVE to be able to buy booze and cars on Sunday. ;)
 
Noting will change TADA's mind. They really don't care about Tesla one way or the other. What they care about is precedent being set that an automaker is allowed to sell a car directly to a consumer and that people may like it. This might lead down the road to Ford, GM...etc asking for the same right just to be 'fair' and ending the dealership model as we know it at least.
 
Sorry, Chris. The Texas Blue Laws (as they pertain to Texas automobile dealers) are in place BECAUSE of the automobile dealers.

Their thinking goes like this:

We want to give our people some time off as well as save ourselves salaries and overhead of being open all weekend, but we don't want to give our competitors who choose to be open all weekend an advantage in the market. So, we'll lobby for blue laws to stay in place for automobile dealers so that no dealer has a competitive advantage and we can blame "those nasty blue laws" whenever a customer complains about car dealers being open only half the weekend.

I don't have time at the moment to cite some sources, but if you poke around you can find plenty of testimony supporting this.
 
I've found something that we Tesla owners (and future owners) can do that might get show some good will in the political arena for the Texas Auto Dealers Association (TADA).

There's a good chance that most Texas Tesla owners are against our current Blue Laws. TADA is also against them. If we join forces to help repeal those laws, maybe we can get them to listen/understand/repeal any legislation that's currently keeping Tesla from selling direct to Texans.

I don't know about you, but I'd LOVE to be able to buy booze and cars on Sunday. ;)

Interesting. Here in Maine the dealers don't want the blue law removed so they don't open 7-days a week.
 
You can't purchase cars in A WHOLE LOT of US states on Sundays! Here is what I culled from Wikipedia - I certainly didn't go through the exercise of learning the validity of each one, nor the inclusiveness of the article.

Forbidden in:

CO
IL
IN
ME
MI (but only in counties with more than 130,000 residents, for whatever exclusion that might bring)
MN
MO
NJ
ND (unclear, actually)
OK
PA
TX***
VA
WI

And I couldn't figure out either CT or UT. Texas, in fact, has the oddest restriction from what I could read: according to Wiki, each dealer has the choice of being open either Saturday or ​ Sunday. Go figger.
 
Chris, the auto dealer exemption from the Blue Laws repeal was put in place at the behest of the auto dealers. Why did you think otherwise? As someone described above, they get the same sales in 6 days as they would if they were open 7 days, so best to save the labor and other expenses of being open 7 days. Doesn't that argument apply to any other business? Of course it does, but no other business is as well organized and politically powerful as the auto dealers.

I know someone who used to work for TADA. He said they had two goals every legislative session-- protect the franchise law and protect their exemption from the Blue Laws repeal.
 
This thread reminds me that auto dealer collusion to limit hours predates the end of Blue Laws. When I lived in Michigan in the 80's I remember the dealers of American cars were closed both Saturdays and Sundays, and only open one evening per week. People had to take a day off work to buy a car. So much for the idea of "competition", no one could take the time to do much comparison shopping. The hours restriction was in the union contract of the salesmen, and customers who were likely from a union household themselves weren't going to complain too much about a union contract limiting worker's hours! Dealers for Japanese cars who tried to open on Saturday found their lots vandalized. Don't know how long that lasted-- we left Michigan in 1986.
 
Holy cow! So wait, there were laws enacted to RESTRICT sales for auto dealers? Why would anyone want to keep these honest business establishments from operating whenever they pleased??? /sarcasm

So the blue laws were put into place to protect us from the Devil? ;)